Seattle candidate tied to more ultra-conservative letters

Seattle City Council candidate Tim Burgess acknowledged today that the publicity company he used to own produced more ultra-conservative fundraising letters than he had indicated Wednesday.

Burgess says he misspoke when he told Strange Bedfellows on Wednesday that Domain Group had only written three of the letters backers of incumbent David Della distributed to the media.

In fact, the company wrote or edited at least six of the letters Della’s campaign collected and passed along to NARAL Pro Choice Washington and Seattle Gay News, who in turn gave them to the media.

Burgess still says he didn’t personally write any of the letters on behalf of Concerned Women for America. He has said he regrets signing a contract with the group.

The letters Domain Group helped produce include:

· An April 1999 letter requesting donations and petition signatures that claims “radical homosexuals” have produced a video broadcast on public television because, “to be blunt, homosexuals are doing all they can to cultivate a new generation of sex partners.”

· A June 1998 letter that asks for donations to “defend America’s families” from “radical feminists and their abortion-industry allies,” “First Lady Hillary Clinton and her attempts to enroll your children into taxpayer-funded daycare,” and “the sex educators in the public schools who follow the lead of the deviant ‘researcher’ Alfred Kinsey…”

· A July 1998 letter that decries, “the murder of millions of innocent babies,” “our out-of-control tax and spend government,” and “the ‘educrats’ and Big Labor bosses who are pushing parents out of the schools … (with) their radical agenda of pro-homosexual sex education, evolutionism, politically-correct ‘social studies,’ and moral relativism.”

· A July 1998 letter asking for money that condemns plans by a government-subsidized Manhattan theatre to produce a show “written by openly-gay playwright Terrence McNally.” The letter writer says she’s sickened by attempts by the play’s producers and supporters to “wrap up their sickening perversion and blasphemy in the Constitution.”

Although some reporters seem to have received slightly different assortments, the packet Burgess saw had 21 letters, he said.